Hell Can Wait

by Theodore Judson

  Gazing into their ancient, red, and pleading eyes, Maternus again had visions of his long-lost mother sitting beside the blackened family hearth. At thirty she had looked as old as anyone in the commons that day. She, however, had never been as unguarded with her emotions as the old folk in Shady Grove.

  “I will see that some of them come here,” he said, and the common room resounded with thirty sighs of contentment.

  On Monday, October nineteenth, the beginning of the seventh week of the regular academic year, Maternus approached Abdul Rathman while the round boy was stuffing books and packets of vanilla pound cake into his locker.

  “Are you still a member of the organized youth group known as the Boy Scouts?” the Roman asked, and his unexpected query nearly caused young Mr. Rathman to jump out of his skin.

  “Goddamn!” the boy exclaimed, after spinning about, clutching his quivering heart. “Don’t do that!”

  “Were I intending to hurt you, I would have done so without speaking,” said Maternus, and found himself feeling less than sympathetic to a boy so easily frightened. “Are you still a Boy Scout?”

  “Sure. Jeez, you could’ve just asked me.”

  “Does your group engage in civic activities, such as paying calls upon the elderly?” asked Maternus.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Do you visit old people?”

  “We could,” shrugged Abdul. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I want you and some of your companions to go to the Shady Grove Rest Home this Saturday at noon, and sit with the residents there for two hours,” said the Roman, speaking in the expressionless monotone he still used whenever he was addressing someone he did not particularly like.

  Abdul thought this over inside his nearly perfectly round head for a full ten seconds before he said, “I’ll do it for fifty dollars.”

  “For ten,” said Maternus. “In addition, I will not tell Miss Edith Pink you became her boyfriend only because she and I can give you protection from bullies.”

  “Twenty and you got a deal,” said Abdul, realizing he was not bargaining from a position of strength. “But how am I going to get anybody else to go? Old people smell like soap, and they pinch your face all the time.”

  “I have given some thought to that concern,” said Maternus, fishing a bill with President Jackson’s portrait on it from his wallet. “I think you must go to your friend Miss Edith — is she by any chance what is known as a girl scout?”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “The admission standards of your associations are apparently very low,” observed Maternus. “You must tell her it is important to you, for reasons I will leave it to you to construct, to bring a host of boys and girls to the rest home. I think she can intimidate many of the others into doing what you want.”

  “Yeah!” said Abdul, and were he a jack-o-lantern his eyes would have lit up. “She’ll scare the hell out of ‘em. I’ll tell her I need the kids to go so I can win a merit badge.”

  “Whatever you think is appropriate. Tell the other children they must be clean and well behaved. Should any of them become too rambunctious while in the company of the old people, inform them there will be consequences.”

  Abdul might have been frightened, had he been paying attention to the last thing Maternus said. As it was, he was busy holding the twenty dollar bill up to the hallway light to check the watermark and did not hear.

  “This new money looks fake every time I see it,” he said.

  Abdul had been paying close enough attention to arrange for no fewer than eighteen children, most of them dressed in their scout uniforms, to show up at Shady Grove the following Saturday. Maternus and Shen were already in the common room when the self-satisfied Mr. Rathman led his tidy and soft-spoken contingent into the rest home. At first, Maternus did not recognize the line of new arrivals as the savage creatures of Susan B. Anthony, those boisterous, raucous imps he had seen screaming in the hallways every afternoon since the previous spring; these little ones following in Abdul’s wake were too good, too courteous to be the middle school students he knew. Yet as he examined the new arrivals more he realized their physical features — in a cleaner state than they normally were — did indeed match those of several of the little monsters he know from his workplace. The now clearly human children actually smiled at the old people the aides introduced them to, and they politely sat and listened while withered hands brought forth trays of cookies and small mountains of yellowed photographs. They segregated into pairs, the boys with the old men and the cherub-like girls with the old women, and everyone was happy to nod at the bits of small talk they readily exchanged. The men could retell each of the hoary fishing stories with which they had already regaled Maternus, and the women gave glowing accounts of each of their grandchildren, and none of the middle school students said they were bored or picked their noses or made a single bathroom sound. The youngsters instead recounted their favorite classes at school — Maternus was surprised to hear they had any classes they would admit they enjoyed — and told their listeners the names of their siblings and every pet they had ever owned, including the goldfish and hamsters.

  “Are they drugged?” the Roman whispered to Shen. “I have read of the wonders that can be worked with sedatives. Mr. Hamburg has told me he has the desire to tranquilize the entire student body. He says he would use a blow gun on them, if the law so allowed. Do you think Abdul may have given them something to drink?”

  “No way,” Shen whispered back. “Kids and geezers are crazy about each other. The little ones make the old ones feel young again, and the kids know the senior citizens will give them stuff if they play along with them.”

  However, there was more to the situation than that. After watching the children and the old people converse for nearly half an hour, Maternus could tell there was something close to genuine affection in the usually staid common room. He decided the fact that children and adults could nigh-instantly care for each other, even though they were not related and could render each other little material benefit, marked an improvement over the human relationships he had known in his former life.

  Shen and the Roman might as well not have been there. Neither the angelic children nor the beaming old people paid them any attention. Twelve minutes into these happy proceedings Shen announced he was going to read the poem “Consider the Wind” to the group, and an elderly gentleman suggested in blunt terms it would be better if the poet waited until later, perhaps until the Christmas season, before he read again. Maternus meanwhile felt a brief pang of jealousy as he watched his Juanita fussing over a thirteen-year-old girl in pigtails. (The soldier recognized her as a vicious imp who had once set a fire in a math room wastebasket.) “Could not the little vixen have selected one of the other women present?” he asked himself. After watching Juanita pat the child’s head for a quarter of an hour without provoking anything more than beatific smiles from the girl, Maternus decided the two cared more for each other than either could possibly care for the likes of him, and his heart ached again.

  His attention focused on Juanita and her friend, Maternus did not notice two figures circling each other on the periphery of the group until Shen said something.

  “Look at the face on that kid,” the poet said, nudging Maternus in the ribs. “I’ve seen bouncers on Colfax who don’t look that tough.”

  The Roman looked where Shen was indicating and saw a stout girl dressed in the same tan blouse and black skirt the other girls were wearing; on her thick limbs the material was stretched tight, like leotards on a weightlifter. Unlike the other children, this girl seemed detached from the general camaraderie in the room. Her arms were folded defiantly across her chest, and beneath her thick brow a wide mouth was fixed in a frown. It was the unbroken line of hair across her forehead that identified her to Maternus.

  “Edith Pink,” he said to Shen. “Abdul has brought his girlfriend to the occasion.”

  He made this observation with an air
of objective dispassion. Though after he glanced at the resident Edith was circling he was no longer so at ease.

  “She is confronting Maggie Lambkin!” he exclaimed to Shen. “Get one of the orderlies. I will hurry over and get between them before she smashes the child.”

  Maternus sped around the edge of the gathering, arriving at the site of the confrontation too late to prevent the combatants from firing their first exchange. Already Edith and Maggie were glaring full sabers at each other and had traded insults.

  “If you weren’t wearing the skirt,” Maggie was saying, “I couldn’t tell if you were a boy or a girl.”

  “Like I care what you think, you old poophead,” retorted Edith.

  “Ladies, there are cookies,” interjected Maternus, bravely stepping into the line of fire. “Wouldn’t either of you like a cookie?”

  “When I was your age,” said Maggie to Edith, “young girls knew how to keep their filthy mouths shut.”

  “When you were young, there were still dinosaurs,” countered Edith.

  “Miss Edith,” said Maternus, “I believe I see a lovely woman named Gloria over there. She doesn’t have anyone to speak to right now. Why don’t you go and sit with her?”

  Edith and Maggie eyed the would-be peacemaker with a mutual disdain. The girl rolled her eyes toward her heavy brow, and the old woman lifted her cane so that its padded tip was a foot off the carpeted floor. Shen arrived on the scene with a male orderly, a young man entirely uninterested in what was transpiring in front of him, or anything else his charges did. The orderly felt he had done enough by walking across the room to be near the infamous Mrs. Lambkin, and he was content to let the big, brutish man already there do the hard work of settling the combatants down.

  “Where’s the director?” shouted Maggie. “He said he’d keep this creep away from me!”

  She took a swing at Maternus, the creep in question, but he anticipated her and, as a skilled warrior, he easily avoided her cane.

  “He’s looking at us all the time at the school,” said Edith. “A real perv.”

  “He tried to attack me in my room,” added Maggie.

  “He’s probably a child molester,” suggested Edith.

  “Did he ever try to take a picture of you? He could be a pornographer selling his stuff on the computer.”

  “He wipes his mouth with his sleeve.”

  Maggie looked at Edith, and there was a thoughtful lull in the action.

  “Do you like cats?” the old woman asked her.

  “You have a cat in here?”

  “Not a live one. I had Snowball stuffed. I have him in my apartment,” said Maggie.

  “Gross,” said Edith. “Can I see him?”

  Together they went off to comb the molting hair of the late Snowball. Both girl and woman were seemingly undisturbed to be in each other’s company.

  “Shouldn’t you prevent this?” Maternus asked the indifferent orderly.

  “The kid looks like she can put up a fight when Maggie takes a cut at her,” said the young man and wandered away to play solitaire in the basement computer room.

  Edith and Maggie remained on the second floor long after the other scouts had bid adieu to their new elderly friends and gone home. Shen and Maternus ventured upstairs to check on what unearthly event was taking place behind the door of Maggie’s apartment, and to make certain the girl was still alive. Maternus tiptoed close enough to put his ear next to the knocker. To his astonishment, rather than the sounds of violence he heard only some demonic cackling.

  The Roman ate that evening at a Red Robin restaurant — he had coleslaw in place of the fries because he had seen a poster of the food pyramid at the middle school and wanted to avoid unnecessary fats — and thereafter went home to listen to the “Mostly Mozart” program on his clock radio. He went to bed at ten still much perplexed about what had transpired at the rest home and feeling great distress about what he should do next. He awoke in the pre-dawn hours to find Mr. Worthy and the demon Banewill standing at the end of his bed, and the angel was smiling at him and proclaimed: “Well done, my friend. You have passed your second test.”

  VII

  But the Memories Linger On

  “What, exactly, did I do?” asked Maternus.

  “My question, precisely,” said Banewill, checking his nails.

  In the dim light generated by Mr. Worthy’s aura Maternus could see the demon was on this occasion dressed in white knee breeches and a powdered wig. He had a white cravat wrapped about his neck and wore a short, red waistcoat.

  “What you have done is just what we charged you to do — you have made Margaret Lambkin happy in her final year of life,” bubbled Mr. Worthy. “When she met Edith Pink she met a young soul cast from the same die she was. Dear old Margaret has realized the world is going to go on, exactly as it ever has, and there will always be vicious, angry people in it. On Margaret’s last day, she will look out at the lights of the city from her apartment window and know, because of Edith Pink, that she is a part of a great continuum. She will acknowledge there are forces at play greater than herself, and will die destined for Heaven.”

  “Maggie gets into Heaven?” asked the Roman.

  “Flag on the field. Flag on the field,” protested Banewill and took a snuff box from the pocket of his velvet coat. “Two flags, in fact. First of all, the ape man here didn’t actually do anything; the fat boy Abdul simply happened to bring that hideous girl to the rest home. That was how she and Maggie met.”

  “Maternus was the one who asked young Abdul to bring the children to Shady Grove, so he was ultimately the one responsible for the meeting,” said Worthy, whose radiant smile was warming the Roman’s heart like sunshine does a cat on a windowsill. “What’s more, our friend’s intentions were absolutely good. Not only did he not lose his temper when Mrs. Lambkin struck him, did you not behold the tender feelings he has for our precious Juanita? A greater kindness, my friend, could not be found in a man who has lived a thousand lifetimes in easy circumstances. What a sensitive, caring companion and lover he is going to make for our Maria! Every day in the city you make me more confident of you, my brave soldier.”

  “My brave soldier,” repeated Banewill in his squeaky, mocking voice and put a pinch of snuff up both his nostrils. “Second flag: you are actually going to let a fire breather like Maggie Lambkin into Heaven?”

  “As much I do not want to agree with Mr. Banewill,” said Maternus, “I do think you are setting the entrance requirements at a low level in her case, sir.”

  “You see, even the ape man thinks she’s a terrible person,” said the demon.

  “I didn’t say she was going directly to paradise,” said Worthy and took a celestial calculator from the folds of his robe. “Let’s see,” he said, and punched some data into the handheld device. “She is guilty of wrath, backbiting, pettiness, racism, cursing, the rejection of love, throw in some savage acts of violence, and…” (He held up the calculator for both the Roman and the demon to see.) “She still owes us fifty-four thousand one hundred and sixty-five years in Purgatory before she gets her big promotion.”

  “So she spends a little time kneeling on concrete, confessing her sins,” sniffed the demon. (He was meanwhile bringing the snuff deeper into his nose.) “What is that compared to an eternity in the lake of fire? I don’t remember your side being this compassionate back when the boys and I took the big fall.”

  “Have you or any of your friends ever had a moment of self-realization in the eons that have passed since your failed rebellion?” asked Worthy.

  “We realize how bad it is to do evil if one gets caught doing it,” said Banewill.

  “That’s not quite the same as true regret, old man,” said the angel.

  “Will everyone I have met in Aurora eventually get into Heaven, sir?” asked Maternus.

  “No, but the fates of all are not in your hands, my friend. You can only pray for those you cannot help.”

  “You might pray for Stephen
’s Uncle Jerry for instance,” said the demon and touched his fingertips together as he chuckled at the thought of the wicked man.

  “Salvation is offered to all,” nodded the angel, saddened by the thoughts running through his vast mind. “Not everyone accepts it. I regret to tell you that not only is this Jerry character in grave danger, your friends Stephen and Shen may well also go to very warm quarters someday.”

  “They’re not bad men!” objected Maternus. “They have been good friends to me. I would be lost in this city without them.”

  “Were Hell reserved for only the evil,” said Mr. Worthy, “then it would be a much smaller place. Most of the levels down there are occupied by souls who simply failed to become fully human, for those are who do most of the wrong in the world. Without the aid of incomplete people, those either too afraid or too indifferent to stand for the right, evil would never prosper. Without their assistance, Hitler would have remained an unemployed ex-corporal, and Stalin an eccentric former seminary student. Your friends are not bad men. They are, in truth, not men at all; rather, they are two boys in the guise of men. Their irresponsibility, their self-centeredness, their indifference to the desires of others, the hobbyhorses they insist upon riding: these are the traits of children, and only in children can such characteristics be forgiven. Neither of them want anything from other people, save some praise and a little material support. Poor Stephen is terrified of mature women; Shen is contemptuous of them. I cannot lie to you, my friend. I am not optimistic about their futures.”

  “You aren’t going to let them … you know, sir?” asked Maternus, and his tone caused the angel’s mood to brighten once more.

  “You care far more for them than they do for you,” he said. “Thus, you will be pleased to learn you third and final assignment will be to do something for Mr. Shen Coleman, and perhaps you will thereby guide him closer to the light.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said the soldier.

  “Behold how strong his concern is,” said the angel to the demon. “He’s making wonderful progress, I must say.”